9-1 Dispatchers Essay

A semi just wrecked and there is a fluid that is all over the highway. There are cars upside down and people are hurt. What do you do? More than likely you are going to call 9-1-1 for help. 9-1-1 Dispatchers will ask a series of questions to find out which emergency personnel to send out. These personnel are called first responders. First responders come in contact with a variety of different incidents. They are trained to use systems for identification of different hazardous materials and possible threats and outcomes of those threats as well as the risks identified with the materials, threats, and outcomes. We have all been on the highway and seen a semi with a tanker trailer attached. You have probably even noticed the different placards or signs on the trailer, but didn’t pay much attention to them. These placards are placed so that you can identify what kind of hazard the material presents. There are two Hazardous Material Identification Systems that first responders use to quickly identify the material being …show more content…
This guidebook is called the 2016 Emergency Response Guidebook (ERG2016). The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), “distributed more than 1.5 million free copies of the guidebook to firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and law enforcement officers across the nation. (Transportation.gov) The ERG2016 is the newest edition of the guidebook as it gets updated every four years. This guidebook has information for hazardous materials. It can tell you how stable the materials are to the risk the material has for fire and explosion, just like the placards. If a first responder knows the material that they are dealing with, they can look it up. For instance, a responder is told that there was a Chlorine leak, they can look in the guidebook and find that this is a gas that causes difficulty